Christmas 2011 Memories

There's nothing quite like starting off your Christmas with a shot of your 3 1/2 year old sporting a pregnant belly.

She insisted on sticking something up there to look authentic. I'll admit she did make an adorable Mary in the Lamb family version of the Nativity alongside her cousin Austin as Joseph.

And Sophie was a sweet little angel. She was good to allow Avery to finally be Mary for the first time.

And the star of the night, Baby Jesus, was played by the very newest little cousin, Andrew. What a cute baby he was! (I think his parents were only slightly nervous about his surrogate parents' ability to care for him, maybe a little like Heavenly Father felt about Christ's birth.)

On the actual Christmas Eve we moved over to the Jensen's to be with them for the holiday. A lot of cousins came for our kids to play with including these two cuties, Skye and Bennett.

Sophie was all too happy to take back the role of Mary this time, and surprisingly none of the boy cousins wanted to play Joseph, so Avery did it.

Here's her best Marilyn Monroe pose, apparently.

2 of the 3 Wise Men

Shepherd Grandpa reading his part in the play.

Here he is with his cute shepherd sidekick, Skye.

Wise Man Joseph with shepherd Lee

Mary pondering deeply what has happened to her (or more likely just exhausted after her delivery)

In the Jensen family they have a Christmas Eve tradition of setting out a goodie table after the little'uns go to bed. Most of it is homemade chocolates that Sophie and Avery got to help Gramma Bob make this year. We get to enjoy the goodies all throughout Christmas Day and it's one of the best parts of the day.

Another one of their traditions is to wait at the bottom of the stairs until Gramma says it's okay to come up to see the presents. Sophie remembered this from years past and from Joseph telling her about how he'd wait there with his brothers and sisters when he was little. She talked non-stop about it the day before Christmas and then made all of us wait there with her. Avery was really excited about it too. The anticipation is the best part about the holidays for me, too, so I can't blame them.

The girls were so excited to tear into all their gifts and made out pretty well.

These adorable booties were made by Bob and the girls love them.

Will liked his little wind-up dinosaurs and other gifts, too, even if he didn't actually get what was going on.

We enjoyed getting to go to church on Christmas Day and tried to get a picture of the kids in their Christmas outfits after the meeting. You can see from the picture how that went over. This was the best shot we got, believe it or not. Oh well, they were cute in person!

And here's our wall of Christmas cards we received this year. We love getting cards from friends and family and looking them over all month long. We feel so blessed in the friendships we have with all of you. Thank you for sending them and for adding to the joy we feel at Christmas!